


The Last Night of the World

by callmeonetrack



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heart-to-Heart, Love Confessions, Nostalgia, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 14:51:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9330062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmeonetrack/pseuds/callmeonetrack
Summary: Lee and Kara have a heart-to-heart before Galactica’s final mission.





	

“You really think this is gonna work?” Kara looked at him across the desk, her brow furrowed, eyes questioning.

Lee felt so incredibly tired suddenly. They’d been working on these plans for the better part of four hours and while he certainly enjoyed the rare chance to spend such an uninterrupted stretch of time with Kara, the utter sense of foreboding in him made it hard to feel at ease. A tiny frisson of doubt still niggled at him for volunteering for this, by all accounts foolhardy, mission to risk hundreds in exchange for one. There were so few of them left.

“Yeah, well I dare anyone to come up with something better.” He tossed his pencil somewhat petulantly onto the table and trod over to the sofa Kara had stolen from sickbay months ago when she’d come back from the Demetrius mission. He sank into it with a sigh, reaching up and undoing the tight knot of his necktie and stripping it off. He’d lost the jacket hours ago.

“You dare them huh?” Kara laughed softly, a funny look on her face, and walked over to plop down next to him. She leaned towards him smiling enigmatically, her voice mocking and low. “But do you double dog dare them, Lee?”

He looked at her quizzically.

“You don’t remember? The night we first met, that stupid game?”

The recognition and memory flooded through him in a rush. Zak laughing and refilling his wine glass, even when Lee protested he had to go. Kara cajoling him to stay longer, wearing a blue top, eyes dancing. His mind traveled the path down memory lane and he found his ears reddening in embarrassment as he recalled the events of that night, even now, so many years later.

“Oh!” She giggled. “You were so drunk.” Kara paused, eyes focused on some distant point. Her voice was softer, the giddy edge to it gone but still sounding pleased, when she spoke. “We were so young.”

Lee nodded. They really were. Now that she’d pulled him back to the beginning, he couldn’t stop his mind from retracing it all, every step that had led them here. He looked over at Kara. She seemed peaceful in a way she hadn’t in a very long time.

“If you could go back, knowing what you know now, even just for a few hours, would you? Or would that be harder, knowing what was coming?”

Kara shrugged. “What would it change really?”

“Maybe nothing.” He paused. “Maybe everything.” Lee looked at her, studying her face. “I just thought you’d jump at another chance, just to have that again. Zak…”

She didn’t speak at first, her face pained. “Maybe I would.” She looked back at Lee. “I don’t really feel like that person any more.” She bit her lip, tilting her head. “I guess I’m not that person anymore.”

“But it’s funny.” Her legs were up on the couch in front of her, arms hugging her knees. “Some of it—Zak, the academy, Caprica—it all feels really far away now. But other stuff I remember like it was yesterday.” 

She turned her head, resting her cheek on her arms and looking at Lee. “That night. I knew, you know?”

Lee stared at her, breath caught.

“When I opened that door and I watched that stupid smile slide right off your face, I knew.” She nodded and shifted positions, letting her legs dangle back down to the floor where she toed a lose thread in the carpet. “And all I could think was, we are so royally frakked.” Her lips tilted up, a gentler parody of her old smirk and Kara laughed softly.

Lee waited for the old apprehension and frustration to come, the unrelenting pressure he felt in his chest whenever conversations with Kara got a little too honest like this. But it didn’t. He supposed, after everything, he wasn’t quite the same person anymore either. So Lee just laughed too. 

They sobered together and leaned back on the couch, heads dropping onto the cushioned back. The clock on the wall, an old analog model that Kara hadn’t bothered to pack, ticked loudly. Lee tried not to think of it as the executioner’s watch, counting off the minutes left.

“It’s hard to believe the old bucket is done.” Lee said, thoughtfully perusing the faded carpet and dingy walls. “It’s even harder to believe I’m gonna miss it. I grew up hating this ship and everything it stood for and now, it’s all that’s left.”

“I’m not gonna miss it.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“It’s a good ship, but it’s not home," Kara shook her head definitively. "Never has been.”

“Where then? Caprica? Your viper?”

Kara rolled her eyes and leaned forward. Locking her gaze with his, she reached out slowly and touched her hand to his chest. She flattened it, fingers splayed.

Her palm rested over his heart.

Lee held her eyes and the silence expanded around them, time gone still on the last night of the world. He looked away first, down at her hand, with the smallest shake of his head. “It’s hard not to think about it.” 

Kara looked at him, unsure. 

“How we wasted so much time.”

“Yeah,” she said, her tone wistful. She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. Kara huffed out a short breath of laughter. “Well,” Her fingers twitched, self conscious now. “No one ever accused me of being too bright.”

She leaned back and started to lift her hand, but Lee raised his own and trapped hers. His warm grip tightened around her fingers, holding them tightly to him. “That’s funny.” Kara looked up in surprise.

“Because you’re the only thing I could ever see.”

Her face rippled, and she reached out with her other hand and settled it on his cheek. Kara leaned in, closing the distance and pressed her lips to his. It was a soft kiss, gentle in a way he couldn’t remember them ever having shared before. There had never been enough time. And now there was none left, yet somehow, more than before.

Lee wrapped his arms around her, a small part of him knowing he should ask if she was sure, mention Sam maybe, but Kara was kissing him and he didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. What would happen after tomorrow. If there would be an “after”. He held on tighter.

The clock ticked as they melted into one another. Kissing turned to stroking and stroking turned to sliding and soon they were moving together, slow and silent and strong, bodies speaking in the absence of words.

As they rocked into each other again and again, Lee thought how ludicrous it was that this was just their second time to know each other this way. It rang false somehow, in his bones, and deeper, and for the first time he wondered, truly wondered, if in this one thing the gods had been true. Wondered about cycles of time and how all that had happened before would happen again. He looked to Kara, wanting to share this small epiphany, to tell her…something. Maybe just that he believed now. But her eyes were already searching his, fingers tangling in his own, and in her smile, he could see she knew. She had always believed.

Long after, when they laid still finally, skin cooled and coiled on each other, Kara spoke first. “What do you think will happen tomorrow?”

Her voice was small in the dark, the cabin lights long ago dimmed. Lee wondered if she was afraid. He knew he was.

“I don’t know.” His hand stroked softly through her hair, so long now, spreading over her back and tickling his side. Kara leaned into his hand and her fingertips brushed his chest in patterns. He thought she might be drawing letters on his skin at first, but soon realized the quick presses were too short. She was tapping out a cadence of music.

Suddenly, Kara’s hand paused and she lifted her head to face him, her chin digging into his chest. “Promise me something?”

He let his hand drift down her cheek, thumb brushing her lips, caressing her face. “Anything.”

She didn’t smile. “Promise me that…” she paused and he could see she was choosing her words carefully. The uncharacteristic hesitancy sent a chill through him. “...if I don’t come back this time…I want you to forget me Lee.”

His brow furrowed. “Kara, I…”

She drew her hand up and covered his mouth. “No. Lee. Promise me. Just forget, forget all about this. I want you to. It’ll be easier that way. I don’t want you to wait anymore.”

He reached out and tugged her wrist away gently, hand closing over hers. “Kara, look we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.” She opened her mouth as if to interrupt him, her face stubbornly set, a hint of Starbuck creeping around the edges. Lee interjected before she could continue, “Maybe we won’t make it through, maybe we will. There’s no way to know. But whatever happens, we’ll face it together, alright?”

Kara stayed silent. She wanted to argue that he didn’t understand. She knew; she could feel it. The air felt like it had before she’d flown into that frakking nebula. It was different this time, she didn’t feel the same desperation. But the music wouldn’t stop playing in her head and it was getting louder.

She looked at Lee wanting to make him understand, but knowing she couldn’t. She pulled her hand from his and pressed her palms to his shoulders, sliding upwards, until their foreheads touched. Kara’s mouth hovered near his cheek and she breathed him in. The smell of his skin. She tried to memorize it.

Lee’s hands stroked her back and Kara pulled back slightly so she could look in his eyes again. “I love you, Lee Adama. Always.” She saw the surprise on his face and a twinge of guilt passed through her. She should have told him more often.

He opened his mouth and she laid a finger over his lips. “Shhh! Don’t say it back.” Kara smiled, letting the love in his eyes wash away the fear one last time, as it had so many before. “I owe you a few.”

She slid over him, lips pressing against neck then chest then lower. Kara repeated the words again and again, chanting them, whispering them, mouthing them against his skin until her body took over the mantra.

Later, Lee watched her sleeping, her face at rest finally. He should wake her soon, the plan had to be presented and there’d be more details to work out. But she was curled into his side and he couldn’t do it just yet. He knew he should try to sleep too, but slumber was elusive despite the languid heat of their tangled limbs. His mind was racing, soaring, thinking about tomorrow and what lay beyond tomorrow.

Lee was a soldier still, and though he knew the price of this mission would be devastating, for the first time in weeks, maybe months even, he felt a spark of hope. He closed his eyes and tightened his arms around Kara, finally drifting off to dreams of a fresh wind and a new start. Day would break soon.


End file.
